254: The Great MAHA Purity War of 2025

Summary

Conspirituality Podcast Episode 254: The Great MAHA Purity War of 2025

Release Date: April 24, 2025
Hosts: Derek Barris, Matthew Remsky, Julian Walker

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Introduction

In Episode 254 of Conspirituality, titled "The Great MAHA Purity War of 2025," hosts Derek Barris, Matthew Remsky, and Julian Walker delve deep into the tumultuous landscape of conspirituality—a movement where conspiracy theories intertwine with spiritual and wellness ideologies. This episode dissects the intricate web of disinformation, charismatic influencers, and the consequent impact on public health efforts, particularly focusing on the alleged blackmail scandal involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.).

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The Scandal Unfolded: RFK Jr.'s Alleged Blackmail

The episode kicks off with a dramatic portrayal of RFK Jr.'s supposed predicament. Julian Walker sets the stage:

Julian Walker [01:32]: "Conspirituality200, 154 the great Maha purity war of 2025 someone's got dirt on RFK Jr. Maha voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates, their code for ending vaccines. Period."

Derek Barris elaborates on the unfolding scandal, highlighting how RFK Jr. publicly declared antisemitism as a public health crisis and endorsed the MMR vaccine:

Derek Barris [06:09]: "On March 28, former Liberal turned right wing pundit Candace Owens wondered aloud who is controlling RFK junior... Anti-Semitism is a public health crisis and to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles."

These declarations seemingly conflicted with RFK Jr.'s longstanding anti-vaccine stance, sparking rumors of external forces compromising his agenda.

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Influencers and the Conspiracy Ecosystem

The hosts discuss the ecosystem of right-wing influencers who amplify and distort conspiracy theories to fit their narratives. Matthew Remsky observes:

Matthew Remsky [04:18]: "So in other words, they're worried, but they're also sympathetic. This is their guy. They can't quite believe that he isn't being compromised."

This duality—sympathy intertwined with fear of external manipulation—fuels the conspiracy-driven discourse surrounding RFK Jr.

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The Role of Jessica Reed Kraus and House Inhabitants

Jessica Reed Kraus, writing under the newsletter "House Inhabitants," emerges as a pivotal figure in this scandal. Julian Walker provides background:

Julian Walker [09:09]: "Krause's conservative origin story has her as a former super liberal who turned hard right during lockdowns."

Kraus's transition from liberal to conservative commentator mirrors a common trajectory among many right-wing influencers who shifted ideologically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Candace Owens and the Evolution of Her Conspiratorial Narratives

Candace Owens, a prominent right-wing pundit, plays a central role in propagating the blackmail theory against RFK Jr. Derek Barris critiques her approach:

Derek Barris [14:18]: "Kraus never mentions Kennedy in this article. That's where Owens comes in."

Owens intertwines celebrity gossip with political conspiracies, amplifying the narrative that RFK Jr. is under external coercion, possibly by entities like the Deep State or international players, despite lacking substantive evidence.

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Ian Carroll and the Amplification of the Scandal

Ian Carroll, another right-wing influencer, escalates the blackmail claims. The hosts highlight his tactics:

Derek Barris [33:50]: "Ian Carroll publishes a nine minute video on Twitter... detailing exactly why the Bobby blackmail story is ultimately a nothing burger."

Carroll's involvement exemplifies how conspiracy narratives are perpetuated through repetitive and amplified claims, often without verifiable proof.

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Alex Jones and Brett Weinstein's Contributions

The episode further examines contributions from Alex Jones and Brett Weinstein, who perpetuate and embellish the conspiracy theories:

Alex Jones [41:37]: "I don't care if his wife's okay with it, if he's been with 20 checks, okay?"

Jones attempts to normalize RFK Jr.'s alleged misconduct by downplaying its severity, while Weinstein focuses on RFK Jr.'s declarations about antisemitism, attempting to link it to broader conspiratorial agendas.

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Theoretical Analysis by the Hosts

The hosts offer a critical analysis of the psychological and sociopolitical underpinnings of the conspiratorial narratives:

Matthew Remsky [67:36]: "These are folks who are willing to make coalitions across Christian denominations... In contrast, the center on the left of the country has struggled to build any popular front against rising fascism."

They argue that the right-wing's effective coalition-building and adaptability make it difficult for more centralized or ideologically consistent movements on the left to counteract rising fascist tendencies.

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Implications for Public Health Initiatives

A significant concern raised is the detrimental impact of conspirituality on public health efforts. Derek Barris underscores the irony:

Derek Barris [70:49]: "His study is laid the groundwork for a lot of what they rail against now... Why is he leaving? Because hall says that censorship is rampant under Kennedy's watch."

The departure of reputable scientists like Kevin Hall from public health institutions due to perceived censorship under RFK Jr.'s administration signals a critical threat to evidence-based health policies.

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Closing Thoughts and Final Clip

In wrapping up, the hosts reflect on the broader ramifications of the scandal and the perpetuation of conspiracy theories:

Julian Walker [63:21]: "You guys know my hatred for Alex Jones as a human being, so let's move on from him and Brett White."

They emphasize the destructive nature of these narratives, not only in undermining public trust but also in fracturing societal cohesion.

The episode concludes with a final clip from Candace Owens, reinforcing the ongoing nature of the conspiracy narratives and their deep entrenchment within right-wing media ecosystems.

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Notable Quotes with Attribution

• Julian Walker [01:32]: "Conspirituality200, 154 the great Maha purity war of 2025 someone's got dirt on RFK Jr..."
• Matthew Remsky [04:18]: "So in other words, they're worried, but they're also sympathetic..."
• Derek Barris [14:18]: "Kraus never mentions Kennedy in this article. That's where Owens comes in."
• Alex Jones [41:37]: "I don't care if his wife's okay with it, if he's been with 20 checks, okay?"
• Matthew Remsky [67:36]: "These are folks who are willing to make coalitions across Christian denominations..."
• Derek Barris [70:49]: "His study is laid the groundwork for a lot of what they rail against now..."

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Conclusion

Episode 254 of Conspirituality provides a thorough examination of the intricate and often perplexing conspiracy-driven narratives surrounding RFK Jr. The hosts adeptly navigate through a labyrinth of claims, offering critical insights into how these theories not only distort public perception but also pose significant threats to public health and societal trust. By dissecting the roles of various influencers and analyzing their strategies, the episode underscores the urgent need for clear, evidence-based discourse in an era increasingly dominated by disinformation.

Transcript

[Quentin]

Location the lab. Quentin only has 24 hours to sell his car.

[Julian Walker]

Is that even possible?

[Quentin]

He goes to Carvana.com what is this, a movie trailer? He ignores the doubters, enters his license plate. Wow, that's a great offer. The car is sold, but will Carvana.

[Julian Walker]

Pick it up in time for it?

[Matthew Remsky]

They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning. Done with the dramatics.

[Derek Barris]

Car selling in record time.

[Quentin]

Save your time.

[Derek Barris]

Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today.

[Matthew Remsky]

Pickup fees may apply.

[Derek Barris]

Foreign hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'm Matthew Remsky.

[Julian Walker]

I'm Julian Walker.

[Derek Barris]

You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod. And we are all individually on Bluesky Guy. You can search our names there and you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes over on [e-mail] conspirituality if you're interested only in our Monday bonus episodes, you can support us via Apple subscriptions. They make it really easy to sign up there and you can do a trial to check it out. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.

[Julian Walker]

Conspirituality200, 154 the great Maha purity war of 2025 someone's got dirt on RFK Jr. Maha voters went MAGA because Bobby said he was going to end vaccine mandates, their code for ending vaccines. Period. No longer would food be dyed and oils be made of seeds. Everyone would get free gym memberships. America's chronic disease epidemic would end overnight, as he's repeatedly claimed. Then Mr. Kennedy goes to Washington, only to declare that antisemitism is a public health crisis and to say that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles. How could he say such a thing when, as Mickey Willis recently claimed, this version of measles is a bioweapon designed to infect the Mennonite population? This week we look way too deeply into Candace Owens recent episodes about the blackmailing of R.F. jr. A story that quickly spread its tentacles into the microphones of a number of contrarian right wing podcasters. We'll give you the lowdown on the story and how, like a children's game of telephone, it repeatedly got distorted and reframed with every mind it touched.

[Derek Barris]

On March 28, former Liberal turned right wing pundit Candace Owens wondered aloud who is controlling RFK junior Her Hour long podcast culminates with a theory that Bobby is being blackmailed. By who? Who knows? By the end of that hour, you're not really sure. But that hasn't stopped the right wing media ecosystem from speculating that it's Israel or the American Deep State or it's Olivia Nuzzi in cahoots with Jessica Reed Krauss. It could even be Jeffrey Epstein from beyond the grave, because apparently there are many Kennedy tapes that are span generations. Or so I'm told. While I spend way too much time on Twitter before I get into details, I want to give a few broad points which I think are worth understanding to frame what we're going to be discussing today. So first, everyone talking about this scandal offers some level of Bobby apologetics. They're all his friends or his fans or both. And the notion that Bobby isn't really going to maha make America healthy again, it never enters their vocabulary. What does is the sense that powerful forces are compromising Bobby and his agenda. And so each person goes to great lengths to explain away any breach of mission.

[Matthew Remsky]

So in other words, they're. They're worried, but they're also sympathetic. This is their guy. They can't quite believe that he isn't being compromised. Like, as opposed to being just a grifting sack of shit from one of America's most dysfunctional families who made their name on pretending to have a moral core.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, well, we got I think 11 clips coming up, so you're going to hear their attitudes toward it, but that's exactly right. Varying levels of sympathy too. Some of them are a little more peeved than others. Second point, the self aggrandizement of each influencer is in abundance. I don't need to belabor this point right now because you're going to hear their own inflated egos during the clip. And finally, I want to explore the way a supposed blackmail scandal bounces around right wing podcasts. This entire thing was invented whole cloth and then treated seriously by others in Candace Owens's network. And it becomes, as we mentioned off the top, this sort of cursed game of telephone, with each character changing the meaning and scope of the scandal a little bit more to suit their own particular needs. I should also note that this isn't the only blackmail scandal that is surrounding Kennedy at the moment. And we also flagged this briefly, but when he said the MMR vaccine was the most effective way to protect against Measles on April 6, which happens to be the second time that he's made this statement, his Twitter feed was Flooded with blackmail accusations. And this, in my opinion, is why Kennedy can never be taken seriously as a bureaucrat. He spent decades spreading conspiracy theories. And so when he has to put on the proverbial suit and tie and go into the office, everyone knows he's faking it. Or in this case, someone has compromise on him, which is where we're going to end up in the last segment.

[Matthew Remsky]

And of course, this is ostensibly why we have hearings, vettings, financial disclosures, medical reports on presidential candidates, all of that stuff. Right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. I mean, that used to be the reason why we had all of that sort of procedure in place when the appearance of some kind of vetting and assessment. Assessment of qualifications was required. Right. But, yeah, it's. This is amazing. I mean, the moment he references a scientifically accurate fact, that's evidence that it must be blackmail.

[Derek Barris]

Well, I don't know if you guys saw on. On our Instagram feed last night, I posted that he has canceled all FOIA requests for the fda, the cdc.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right, yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah. So journalists can no longer access what he's doing behind the scenes. And this is, you know, Mr. Transparency.

[Matthew Remsky]

So. So an agency director can cancel a federal instrument like that. Like, I thought that FOIA was a sort of a general way in which journalists were able to address the federal government, but an agency director can just sort of like, shut that down for his own agency?

[Derek Barris]

Apparently, yeah. Wow. In this administration, apparently, that is what is happening.

[Matthew Remsky]

Sure. Whatever.

[Julian Walker]

Canceled. Canceled.

[Matthew Remsky]

Whatever.

[Derek Barris]

So, going back to vaccines for brief moment, Washington Post reported that hours after he tweeted his support of the MMR vaccine, he attended the funeral of the second child who died from measles in East Texas. He also championed anti vax doctor friends who were promoting alternative treatments. And this text is in the very same tweet in which he's posing for a PR stunt photo with the Mennonite families of the deceased children. And the father of one of those deceased children later said that he had no idea those photos were going to be used on social media.

[Matthew Remsky]

Now, those families, however, weren't opposed to the general messaging, though. Is that right?

[Derek Barris]

Yes, they have come out strongly against vaccines. One, I believe it was the other father of one of the deceased children said it was the doctor's fault for not giving their child the right drugs or the right, you know, treatments at the time. It wasn't the lack of the vaccination. So, yes, they are still on board.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right. Okay.

[Derek Barris]

Like I said, that's not the blackmail that we're going to be discussing today. This one is much more complex, convoluted, and to be frank, it's dumb, but worth considering, considering how many followers all the people we're going to discuss today have and the influence they have on Kennedy and Maha. So the story begins with someone we haven't actually covered that much on this podcast, but who's been in my orbit for a while. Her name is Jessica Reed Kraus, and she writes a popular newsletter called House Inhabitants. And as with many Covid contrarians, I mean, actually most of the people we're going to be talking about today kind of follow a similar origin story here. Kraus conservative origin story has her as a former super liberal who turned hard right during lockdowns.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, okay, so let's, let's just sort of clear this up. Does she have any super liberal credentials beyond saying so? Like, did she make campaign donations? Volunteering? Did she run for office? I mean, there's a trend of kind of inventing past commitments and a story of waking up or, you know, going into ideological rehab that lends, you know, more energy to the contrarian Persona. Like, I was so radical. I thought gay marriage was okay, but now I'm super radical because I realized the scourge of wokeness and so on. Like, so is, is, is this legit or.

[Derek Barris]

No, it's hard to tell. She says that she donated to Joe Biden's campaign, for example, in 2020. So it does seem that she was on the liberal side of things. How much, you know, how left she was is open for debate. I don't know enough about her history because there's not like her, her star really rose with house and habit. It's not like she was a big player. So she can show to make whatever she wants up and say it. It's when house and habit becomes its own thing that she really gets to go into the spotlight.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one because politically, over the course of this podcast, we've mapped out the general trend who were kind of politically checked out and even naive, but then they become red pilled during COVID and they have kind of QAnon sympathies. I would imagine she, she means by super liberal that culturally she did not identify at all as a Republican and she voted for the blue team because of where she lived and how she grew up and having generally sort of socially liberal attitudes. But as much as we can scoff at the I used to be liberal or I was a super liberal claim, I think there's a, there's a sad story underneath this that the percentage of the population for whom that has been the default setting is continuing to shrink dramatically.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

So in that transition, she started covering her pop culture stories like Britney Spears's conservatorship or the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial. She also offered a lot of mommy blogger content, and she filmed videos in her Wellness Ready kitchen. And her readership grew quickly as she realized her teenage ambition of being a gossip columnist. That is what she always wanted to do. The British paper of the Times estimates that she makes up to $2 million a year monetizing her substack now. And thanks to that success, the mommy blogger became the bread and butter. Her husband quit his job to look after their four children. Once she started bringing in that kind of money in February 2024, Semaphore's Max Tanny wrote about how both Trump and Kennedy, who was still then a presidential candidate, were Kraus.

[Matthew Remsky]

One week in January, Jessica Reed Kraus attended Donald Trump's Iowa victory after party at the Hotel Fort Des Moines and posed for pictures with Donald Trump Jr. And Kimberly Guilfoyle. From there, she flew to Hawaii to meet Tulsi Gabbard, where the former Democratic congresswoman took her to her favorite smoothie place. Three days after schmoozing with the Trump inner circle in Iowa, Krause brought her family on a catamaran to go whale watching and surfing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And famous surfer Kelly Slater. What a whirlwind tour.

[Julian Walker]

I have a dream to be a gossip columnist. What a time to be alive.

[Derek Barris]

What's your favorite smoothie place, Julian?

[Julian Walker]

I was gonna say that. That that section was perfectly written for Matthew to read.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, I know. It's erawan, you know, $24 branded smoothies.

[Julian Walker]

Absolutely.

[Matthew Remsky]

I've never even. So, like, I've never even been to Erewhon. I don't know what the branding looks like. I don't know what a. I have no idea what this is. You guys keep bringing it up and I think it's like, can you just remind me, is it like a super upscale Whole Foods or something?

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, it's a small boutique, although the chain is growing. I've gone to the one in Venice that was the only one I've ever been in. And it's. It's. The prices are absurd. Well beyond anything Whole Foods ever was.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. Awesome.

[Julian Walker]

And it is nowhere spelled backwards.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, yeah. But that comes from. I don't want to get it sidetracked, but that comes from the early 70s when it was founded by the hippie owners and it has gone through evolution. Let's just leave it at that right now. It wasn't always as douchey as it is now.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So. So, point is, Kraus has clout. And this clout caught the attention of Candace Owens, who again as we mentioned, is also a former liberal. She used to be and she really was. She tried to make her name in media as a liberal and failed and then switched and found a lot more success because she realized there was more money to be made by spreading gossip on the right. And I'm not being hyperbolic here, her hour long podcast on this blackmail scandal was a barrage of she said, she said content. So let's get into this because I don't know if you guys listen to the clips, but oh boy. So it begins with Kraus's March 22 article called in Defense of Gossip, which details her annoyance over bro fraternity ego in media. In it, she says Owens quote, appears to be floundering. And that was in reference to her content production and scope. And she writes, megyn Kelly and Candace.

[Julian Walker]

Owens, two of the most prominent women in male dominated media, are clearly pivoting. Whether conscious or not, they're shifting toward the one thing that reliably pulls in the most valuable audience in media, women.

[Derek Barris]

Kraus also criticizes Tucker Carlson and Ian Carroll, who I'll get to in a bit as he quickly waited on this scandal and he ended up joining his friend Candace on April 3rd for a full episode. We'll hear part of that a little later. Now, importantly, Kraus never mentions Kennedy in this article. That's where Owens comes in. I'm going to continue to tell this story chronologically, but I want to point out that on March 30, two days after Owens's video, Kraus published another blog called as Conspiracy Bruise, where she writes about her original story.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's been spun into something so convoluted it borders on comical.

[Derek Barris]

Now this I fully agree with, although the whole thing is comical. So I'll reiterate that this entire affair rises to the level of passing notes in high school. And yeah, I'm dating myself as a Gen Xer, but Kraus's entire piece is basically, I find podcasters insufferable, but I'm a gossip writer you should listen to, right? And as happens in the right wing TMZ wannabe space, without the access that the TMZ writers have, it's just more grievance politics. So the first essay that Owens is addressing is Krause's meditation on feminist media, but it's rooted in gossip columns written for women that drive women's eyeballs and wallets. Kraus accuses Kelly and Owens of shifting their emphasis to focus on women and gossip, like celebrity scandals and interpersonal drama, to grow their audience.

[Matthew Remsky]

So really amazing insights about feminist media. Like, what does she say about feminist media?

[Derek Barris]

Oh, amazing, Amazing insights. I mean, she's basically saying something true, which is that women drive the media economy, but they're undervalued as people, basically. Then she kind of conflates it with all her hate on broad podcasters who own the attention economy, which is also very true. She talks a lot about mediocre men rising up to this level of popularity, but keeps pointing out that mothers aren't valued as much. So these are all true on a surface level, but when you read them together, it's all just a. Yeah, so.

[Julian Walker]

Grains of truth, but woven together into various kinds of dog whistles. There's another great purity struggle going on here, too, guys. I would say the fight card is headlined by this feud between Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire and Megyn Kelly, and that's about career women supposedly betraying their rightful role in the world by waiting to have kids. But bubbling underneath that, there's an especially douchey conservative Christian debate.

[Derek Barris]

Bro.

[Julian Walker]

Podcaster. Have you come across this guy, Andrew Wilson? He sort of sneers while he SM a cigarette on Piers Morgan these days, and he just slams all of these prominent Republican women in the media as being covert feminists because they're not in the barefoot, in the kitchen. Right. Making a sandwich.

[Matthew Remsky]

They can't win, right? There's no. There's. There's got to be. Right Word pressure.

[Derek Barris]

Always right, Julian, I. It's a little disingenuous. You're smoking cigarettes every time we record.

[Matthew Remsky]

Wouldn't that be funny if we, like, signed on? Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Brownstone Institute, baby. That bring the smoking. Smoking back, right?

[Julian Walker]

Who do you think I am, Matt Brown?

[Derek Barris]

So Owens naturally makes all this about her, even though she's just one of many people that are cited in the piece. And in her defense, Owen has always combined celebrity gossip with politics. That isn't new for her. And here's how RFK somehow gets involved. Apparently, this blog post was edited by Olivia Nutzy, who is the former New York magazine political correspondent who supposedly had a sexting affair with Bobby during his presidential run. According to Owens, the two women are now working together. And here's where the speculative leaps really emerge, as we're going to hear in the clips after the break. Okay, so the entire blackmail scandal hinges on the following timeline. Nutsy had a supposed affair with Bobby. Owens likes Bobby, so she takes him at his word that it was just sexting. Sexting. Why? Because vaccines.

[Unknown]

I was inclined to believe RFK Jr. At the time because I've had a soft spot for him, which I'd like to harden a bit right now because he was the only source when I decided I didn't wanna vaccinate my children. And I'm not gonna take that away from him. His Children Health Defense Fund. I am not gonna be so petty as to pretend that he was literally the only website. If you wanted to find information about vaccines and learn something different other than what pediatricians were telling you, you really only had RFK jr's charity, Children's Health Defense. And so I was excited about him joining the Trump administration because I have felt that the country has been too polarized, and when it comes to children's health, we shouldn't be left or right. Like, moms do need to come together on this and take control and say that doctors have gone too far.

[Matthew Remsky]

You know, there's a. There's a pseudo feminist posturing here that's always so weird because there's a huge chunk of our vaccine researchers and obgyns and pediatrician who are women and moms who are primarily focused on the health of women and girls and children. It seems like one of the things that's going on with this stuff is that if Owens or Bari Weiss or Kelly Brogan manage a feminist thought, it has to be, like, about 40 years old. Right. It has to be located in some second wave or below movement. There's this retro feel to it, as though June Cleaver was a feminist, you know, and she's saying those commie doctors have gone too far. You know, I just want my kids to be safe in our house with the breadwinning dad. Right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So polarizing. Matthew, really, I know you need to work on being a little more conciliatory and. Yeah, I agree. There's nothing really feminist about this. It's just populist rejection of medical science experts in favor of whatever conspiracy narrative resonates with that contrarian caricature of, like, mother's intuition.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

I also want to point out that learn something different about vaccines is an understatement for sure.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

From there, Owens goes into how Nutsy didn't grow up in wealth. She lost her job at New York Magazine thanks to the sexting scandal with a presidential candidate. But somehow she was Able to move to Malibu. How could a non elite possibly afford such a move? Did she have savings? A sugar daddy? Who knows? But this next clip is the full proof of the idea that Bobby is being blackmailed. Or as Owens has asked, why does the Maha movement seem like it's been compromised? Let's listen to the smoking gun.

[Unknown]

But the other element of this is super interesting. Olivia currently living in Malibu, which means now she has lived in a city, which means now she's gotta drive a car. Is driving a car. She's driving a foreign car in Malibu. And her license plates, and I'm not giving you the end of a license plates, but her real true license plates are. And I can show you here, RFK66. Blank blank. Hmm. That is some coincidence, I got to tell you. I got to tell you. Okay, like, I got to tell you, it's a weird thing. Like, it's not every day that your license plates reflect the sexting scandal that you just had.

[Matthew Remsky]

Do you know what's so weird about listening to these clips? I get the same feeling from Alex Jones. You can hear the absolute loneliness and isolation of the soundstage, right? She takes those long beats where she's sort of trying to squeeze this theatricality out of the, you know, big reveal. And you can hear that the production crew is just kind of like standing around and hoping that she does really well. And it's just very. It's people in small boxes everywhere doing little things in the mirror. Do you know what I mean? And then they get. And then they get broadcast. They get recorded and broadcast. It's just such a weird. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? It's a very weird feeling.

[Derek Barris]

What you bring up reminds me of during the early days of COVID when everyone was isolated. John Oliver, they basically set up his studio, but it was only him in his room.

[Matthew Remsky]

That's right.

[Derek Barris]

And he kept referencing the exact thing you're talking about. And he was able to use it to be like, we're all in this situation. Isn't it ridiculous to be in this lonely, isolated space? And I'm trying to do this, but this is what we can do right now, which is the antithesis of what you're talking about, because there is self reflection in what he said, whereas there is no self reflection in the space that you're sort of highlighting right now.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I can almost see and feel her imagining her caricatured audience in those beats. Do you know what I mean? It's very, very odd.

[Julian Walker]

And that in those extended Pauses. Their minds are blown y by the connection she's making.

[Matthew Remsky]

And she's really enjoying that. Oh, yeah, like she's cheering herself on.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

Anyway, okay, so. So what do you. What is she saying about the license plate? Is that supposed to be RFK666?

[Julian Walker]

I'm lost.

[Derek Barris]

Well, there. There's. There's a photo that supposedly emerged of this license plate, and it's six. Six something, something. It's seven digits. So. All right, that is probably just coincidence because apparently she showed the photo like someone has it, so that. That part is just coincident. Or is it a. Oh, so maybe.

[Julian Walker]

There'S a satanic coincidence underneath the initials of the names of the sexting scandal.

[Derek Barris]

Everything is connected.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, and Gavin Newsom actually printed his vanity plate, but got the numbers wrong and gave him a satanic plate for his car.

[Unknown]

Or her car.

[Matthew Remsky]

Actually, it's her car. Right?

[Julian Walker]

It's Malibu. So the fires maybe have something to do with this too. And the gay fire chief, you know.

[Derek Barris]

I know dei well, it's not actually clear whose car it is. So when, Julian, when you said you're lost, that is really it. This entire thing we're discussing today, that was the heart of it. Right there. That is where all the speculative leaps begin. The supposed license plate, which Owens believes is part of a honeypot scheme. She wonders aloud if it's Jessica Reed Kraus's car with RFK license plate, and Olivia is driving it. And all of this made Owens look further into what the hell is going on.

[Matthew Remsky]

Oh, I can't wait.

[Derek Barris]

So she says, we don't know who's funding this sub stack assault on her because obviously a right wing troll who's making up to $2 million a year pumping out gossip columns needs some sort of extra funding from somewhere. So Owens loses faith in Bobby because of a license plate, and that makes her investigate him with a more critical eye. And what? She turns up. Oh, boy, watch out. And I just want to note, I believe she means malady here. And I only say that, like, I up words all the time, so it's not really a dig at her. But I'm saying it because when I first heard this, I had to stop and, like, think about it. So just keep that in mind while you listen.

[Unknown]

But he's kind of made anti Semitism his focus. This is a tweet from him that he recently sent out. Anti Semitism, like racism is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethality. Lethalities comparable to history's Most deadly plagues in recent years of censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly inverulent pestilence. Making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect based on speech, freedom and open debate. And then he included a link to the hhs.gov so that's weird. And then he's decided that anti Semitism is a health crisis. This is not what we put you. This is just not. We put you in office for. I don't care who needs to debate any of this other than this is not what people put you in office for. We wanted you to go after vaccines. We wanted you to go after the cdc. We did not want you to establish anti Semitism as a health crisis.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, maybe you were not taking a dig at her. This is not really a dig either, but I will say her unfamiliarity with words longer than two syllables does say a lot, perhaps about her general reading habits.

[Matthew Remsky]

She. She is speeding up to Ben Shapiro levels of patter, though, at the end as well. Yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty anxious.

[Derek Barris]

In her rants, Owens and the many people who follow her, cites Bobby's friendship with and promotion of Rabbi Shmuli. She's referencing the Hasidic Rabbi Shmuli Bodiak, who is the author of 31 books, including Kosher Jesus and Kosher Sex, and he's the former host of the reality TV show Shalom in the Home.

[Julian Walker]

Are you sure this. Are you sure he's not. He's not.

[Derek Barris]

AI.

[Julian Walker]

This is too good.

[Derek Barris]

No, it is.

[Julian Walker]

It is.

[Matthew Remsky]

No, he's serious, man.

[Derek Barris]

Being in the spotlight for decades, he regularly courts controversy. But this one's specific to Owens, as Shmuley got into a public feud with her in March 2024 due to her support of Palestine. Shmuley dressed up as a Candace Owens Jew, which he posted on Twitter. Twitter. And she claimed he has a deep hatred for blacks, Muslims and Christians.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, he goes way over the top. I mean, they've yelled at each other about this on Piers Morgan's show, which is really the place where you go to do that. And it's w. Wildly effective. Clickbait. The YouTube video of that argument has.

[Derek Barris]

4.3 million views since Bobby has been standing alongside Shmuley since at leave July of 2023. This relationship, along with Bobby's recent tweet, all became part of Owens's cork board.

[Matthew Remsky]

On a serious note, with this friendship, Bobby, I think, has to own supporting one of the most, I think, fascist Zionist influencers. In the US like you can find his views on Israel anywhere, along with his zeal for blaming every victim of the IDF on Hamas. But more, I think, more pressing for the moment and I think for Bobby's own blathering on about free speech is his support for Bodiok's support for the rendition of people like Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia, the Colombia anti genocide protest leader. There's a nice quote I found here from a Shmuley appearance on Piers Morgan. Quote, deport him now because he's not promoting free speech, he's promoting incitement of violence. Hate speech is actually outlawed in the United States. I love the First Amendment, but you cannot incite violence for people to be attacked. And you know, and people can debate the morality of Khalil's rhetoric, but he has not been charged with any crime. And you know, this is one of these arrests that has set the precedent for black fanning legal residents without charges and, you know, rendering them to El Salvador or wherever. And Bobby is now tied to that. That at the hip.

[Derek Barris]

It harkens back to the FOIA request thing. It's, it's free speech and censorship. As long as you're not arguing against what I'm saying. Basically.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

So that maybe they connect there as well. To be clear, Bobby, as you flagged, has long supported Israel. So any sort of grievances or debate is totally fair game. But let's recap the story up to now. Owen strikes back at criticism from Jessica Reed Krause, AKA House Inhabit. She supposedly discovered a working relationship between Krautz and Olivia Nutzy. She found out that Nutsy was driving a car with a license plate that starts with the letters RFK and it's supposedly owned by Kraus. Bobby is calling anti Semitism a public health crisis in his position as secretary of hhs. He must be being blackmailed. Now, if you are wondering whether JFK would find his way into this, congratulations. Here's where Owens brings it all together.

[Unknown]

I just know where there's smoke, there's fire. And it seems to me that she, her odd protection of RFK Jr. Her wanting to stay in the background as she edits pieces attacking certain people. And all of them kind of happen to be people that say anything about Israel. After I looked through all the JFK stuff, it ain't making me feel like. It's just not making me feel like this couldn't be. I don't know. I guess the best way to say it is like the last leg of the Zionist attack on influencers who they don't have influence over, who just tell the public the truth and are willing to discuss the topics as they are. Just don't care what you're going to call us anymore because you've called us everything. Which is why you're now working on conspiratorial pieces and trying to make them look real.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, they're working on conspiratorial pieces. So if this is where the story ended, I wouldn't even have floated the idea of doing this episode. It would have been yet another RFK Jr. Soap opera that is worth forgetting.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, I mean, the thing that I'm really noticing here as we listen to these clips in order, Derek, and thank you for doing the work, gathering them and piecing together this incoherent, you know, theory that she has going on is that she's on the same arc as Alex Jones and Brett Weinstein and Russell Brand, where over time, the more you talk about conspiracies, the more you become one of the characters within the conspiracies who's being conspired against because you're the brave truth teller. And so anyone who's criticiz you that then becomes woven into the larger story of what's happening on the cork board.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right, they think they don't like postmodernism. Right? They think they, they think, they complain about meta narratives and self awareness and stories within stories and becoming the central character. They think they don't like that. They fucking love it. They love it. They love it.

[Derek Barris]

Right wing influencers never let a good conspiracy die. And in the following days, the story bounced around that ecosystem to millions of people, including who we're going to look at now, Ian Carroll. And as you just referenced, Alex Jones and Brett Weinstein because they're both part of this. So I keep referencing telephone. It is that. And it didn't take very long. Ian Carroll, who was also called out by Krause in the original blog post, opens with a similar tone. Bobby is in charge of public health to get rid of vaccines. But then, plot twist, the big pharma deep state is actually keeping Bobby in check with a sex tape. Now, if you're not familiar with Ian Carroll, congratulations, I applaud you. And secondly, I'm sorry you're now going to meet him. This dude is purely the product of right wing conspiratorial fervor. Although like Krause and like Owens, he too claims that he was on the left until Covid radicalized him. Talking about conspiracy theories is literally his thing. That is It. And he's also spun off a T shirt company to share the messages and monetize it of his conspiracies. Now, like many on Twitter, the algorithm favored his just asking questions approach about COVID alongside his long tirades about Jeffrey Epstein and Pizzagate and the Podesta emails. And then a March 2025 appearance on Joe Rogan sent his numbers into the stratosphere.

[Matthew Remsky]

Two things about this guy. I didn't know much about him until you flagged him, Derek, but first of all, he look like the guy who does the jokes on TikTok about being a customer service representative, where, you know, a customer comes and the guy's working at Ikea and he says, you know, how dare you, you know, ask me for, you know, service? Or, like, do you think I want to be working here? He has this kind of, like, smarmy. It's like he's playing a comedian and he's not. And I just, like, my whole body just sort of prickles up when I see him or hear his voice. It's so smarmy and self assured, and I just don't know who can't get a bad feeling from what is coming off of the screen.

[Julian Walker]

It makes sense that he would show up on Joe Rogan's radar because he's someone who pretends to be a comedian but is not at all funny, I guess.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, right.

[Derek Barris]

I don't know if you caught up at. A couple months ago, after the wildfires, that was the first time I covered him on our Instagram feed. I made a video about his insane takes about Altadena fires at the time. So we. We have touched upon him before. This is the first time we're looking at his podcast.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's like. But it's like he. He does this walk and talk thing all the time where he knows exactly what's happening in the world, and I just don't know how long that's going to last. You know, with regard to really grabbing clicks. Like, how long can it possibly be that people go, hmm, that guy sounds like he really knows what's going on. I have no idea who he is or where he comes from. But, yeah, I'm gonna listen to more. How long can that last?

[Derek Barris]

I don't know. Have you ever met people before?

[Matthew Remsky]

Okay, here's the other thing about this guy. But this. A lot of people are doing this. Yeah, I. I hate the fact that the Epstein case is actually lying right there in front of us like a steaming turd that no one can clean up. Because it gives guys like this, you know, this really solid hook into the meat of real abject corruption and deception. And they know how to fantasize about it and how to monetize those fantasies, but they would have no idea how to actually investigate it or address it, you know, because if they did, it would probably collapse their, their black and white worlds. In fact, they don't want to solve. No, those, those particular black holes. Right.

[Julian Walker]

No, they have to keep it in self focus because Daddy Trump is such a big part of the story, in fact.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is that blurring of real things that could be conspiracies with these insane conspiracy theories. I don't know. Longtime listeners might remember that early in Covid I did a. Was that clubhouse or treehouse, that app that, you know, you could call. And the week after we covered Brett Weinstein going on to Bill Maher talking about vaccines, Eric Weinstein came into our clubhouse.

[Julian Walker]

He blessed us. That was, that was our biggest moment.

[Derek Barris]

And one of the first things he did was start talking about Jeffrey Epstein. And it immediately switches, right? There's a psychological component that happens where it's just like, yeah, the Epstein thing is up in a lot of ways. And it immediately switches the ground to make it seem like they're more legitimate. And the influen influencers are really good at doing that.

[Julian Walker]

Yep.

[Derek Barris]

Ian Carroll publishes a nine minute video on Twitter on March 30th where he details exactly why the Bobby blackmail story is ultimately a nothing burger. And we'll see how Matthew here reacts to the smarminess.

[Quentin]

In talking about the blackmail angle. We are showing Bobby that we don't care, we don't care about his sexual infidelities. There is no evidence, evidence that I have seen that anyone has talked about in any of the circles that it has to do with kids or any of the actual like illegal style sexual blackmail. We just want Bobby to save our country and that's what he's here to do. Blackmail only has power if it's a secret and it stays in the dark and it's used as leverage. So here's a speedrun of what I personally think is going on right now. I have spoken to many people involved in the campaign, from the Maha moms from before the campaign, people that have been around Bobby for, for a decade and more, that have had serious concerns about this kind of stuff for a long time, but have been afraid to speak about it because they don't want to damage Bobby's reputation or the campaign. Many of these people have been pushed out. Despite great contributions, many of them have decided to leave because they just couldn't handle this environment that this kind of control seems to be creating. And the most awkward part is that everyone has different theories about who is controlled within Bobby's campaign camp, who is controlling him, who is an op and who is not. And it's all just allegations without smoking guns at this point.

[Matthew Remsky]

Why does he sound like he's in a cooling truck?

[Derek Barris]

He's talking directly into his phone. And if his hand's over whatever, it just. He's not someone who uses, like, professional equipment to do this right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, he's just giving you the raw feed of his brilliant insights. But this is where the moral hypocrisy makes for. For powerful, pragmatic solidarity amongst people on the right. I mean, you don't. You don't really see this on the left. The things they'd try to destroy their opponents over on principle that they're gonna stand on are all forgiven as long as you're on their side. And then in terms of the game of telephone that you referenced, Derek. Yeah, here we go. Now, finding a moral relativist solution that somehow neutralizes the blackmail so Bobby can get on with his open anti vax.

[Derek Barris]

Crusading, as I mentioned, and they all bring themselves into the story. And that's how we leap from Owens's corkboard to Carol's misogyny. As long as it's not kids or anything, because infidelity is just fucking fine. Nothing to see from someone who oversees the entire public health apparatus in America.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I mean, he's, you know, Bobby is an admitted sex assaulter who talks openly in a kind of, like, strategic transparency mode about how many skeletons he has in his closet. If they were all released, he would be president and they could vote and whatever. Beyond what we know of the dozens and dozens of affairs while married to Mary Richardson, who died of despair and suicide, we've also got his own, like, sister talking about his consistently chaotic and aggressive behavior as a teen. And young men, we're just talking. I mean, and I think sex is actually a distraction here because it's really about whether this is a guy who uses people. That's what it's about.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, but let me tell you, if Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, what else is he not telling us the truth about in terms of geopolitics and the nuclear football?

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

Well, from sex, we next get to Alex Jones, who we'll cover after the break. Alex Jones is on a hike while he was watching the Candace, Owen, and Ian Carroll videos because you know, how awesome the people who just blare their phones out while you're in the woods are in general. So he decides he needs to stop right there and jump in. And so he opens by saying how much he likes and respects Candace and Ian. He then says he thinks the whole Israel thing isn't the most important thing in the world. He calls Shmuley a demon, and he reminds everyone that RFK Jr. Has always been a fan of Israel. So, again, no smoking gun here either. Then he lands in the clip I'm about to play, because of course he does.

[Alex Jones]

What I'm into is policy and real results. The fruits of the tree. As Christ said, I'm a Christian, so I'm gonna say Kennedys are famous for their zest. I got my own zest. And I've never been, you know, somebody that sits there and lies and says that. I haven't, you know, enjoyed some females in my time, though I'm married and all the rest of it. I'm a good guy currently. The point is, is that I. I don't mean King David had his best friend killed because he was lusting after his wife, and then he repented to God over it, and God said, your man from my own heart, because he really, really was upset about what he did and turned it around. So if you look at RK Jr I don't care if his wife's okay with it, if he's been with 20 checks, okay, in the last couple years, okay? As long as it's consensual, I. I don't care. I'm not saying it's morally the best thing. I personally have not done stuff like that, but. But when I was younger and stuff, I was wild. So. But I understand the mindset.

[Matthew Remsky]

And.

[Alex Jones]

And if you think the Kennedys, who are famous for their prowess and for their drive, but you also see in life, in other aspects, if you think that's the reason to have some big scandal, even if it's true, and to do all of this and then let them continue with the poison shots and the GMO and all the additives and stuff, it's bullshit.

[Matthew Remsky]

So he really wants to make a distinction between the zest power and drive of, you know, the Kennedy men who are willing to, you know, have dozens of affairs. And somebody like him, he has his own zest power drive, but he's a good guy, and, you know, he's never gonna do anything like that. It's not his cup of Tea. Right. But, yeah, I don't know what the. Like, there seems to be this weird, false division between people who sort of appreciate this and people who do it, but the overall implication is that, you know, fucking anyone you can is just the side effect of your power and productivity. That's what you're gonna get with a theory of history.

[Derek Barris]

Exactly.

[Julian Walker]

If you want an alpha male, well, the guy who's going to get shit done and be a real cowboy is probably going to be, you know, a.

[Matthew Remsky]

Little bit like that.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And there is some historical precedent here. You know, Kissinger's famous observation that power is the greatest aphrodisiac, but it is classic patriarchal rationalization. And they, of course, would have piously decried it in the case of someone like Bill Clinton. Right.

[Derek Barris]

Well, you guys know my hatred for Alex Jones as a human being, so let's move on from him and Brett White scene doesn't touch the sex angle, thankfully. He laser focuses on the notion that Bobby is being blackmailed. And what does it. What evidence does he have? In the episode how to free RFK Jr. Of his Dark Horse podcast, he cites a March 2024 tweet by Kennedy. Now, like Owens, Brett points out that Kennedy is tweeting in his official capacity as secretary, not his personal account, which he believes he should be free to do. Mean account, totally fine. But when you're representing the U.S. government, you have to be a little more measured and professional. So here's the tweet.

[Julian Walker]

Instead of inspiring universal condemnation, the October 7th holocaust triggered a global wave of anti Semitism. Ivy League campuses became a greenhouse for poison. President Trump has ordered his cabinet to use every constitutional tool to uproot this divisive weed. I'm glad Colombia has agreed to this first step and will begin to restore itself as a garden of tolerance, reason, compassion, and respect.

[Derek Barris]

So here's what Brett says about this situation.

[Unknown]

Bobby Kennedy is my friend. I don't want to have to say this, but this feels like a hostage video. This feels like somebody who has no choice but to say the things that he is saying from the podium at which he is saying that them because of some force that we cannot see. And the idea not only of making antisemitism the focus of this new Health and Human Services era, But to call October 7th a holocaust obviously is the most charged of terminology.

[Derek Barris]

Right. Because Bobby isn't known for being hyperbolic.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

Brett goes on to claim, few people really think deeply about why antisemitism is unique among other forms of racism. But thankfully for dark horse listeners, Brett has thought about it and he's realized what it is. He says that anti Semitism is special because Jews have lived among other populations as a diaspora.

[Julian Walker]

Okay.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, that's it. I was doing the Candace Owens pause for a second there. Yeah, that's it.

[Julian Walker]

Is that the evolutionary perspective that he's offering?

[Derek Barris]

It's. It's the global universal understanding of truth which the Weinstein are uniquely qualified to speak about. That is his grand revelation.

[Matthew Remsky]

Because telomeres.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, exactly. Well, the. Yeah, the telomeres are part of the diaspora, so he ultimately lands here about the supposed blackmail.

[Unknown]

I don't know what's going on. I will say that I believe Bobby Kennedy's commitment to defend Jews and to advocate for Israel is longstanding, and it is genuine. I don't think that that is in and of itself the problem here, but the. The fact that he is tweeting this from his official account exactly at the moment when Make America Healthy Again could be firing on all cylinders. This is the moment at which we should address the myriad of problems that Bobby Kennedy is in many ways uniquely encyclopedic about, suggest that something else has different priorities and that Bobby is experiencing some kind of pressure that he is not able to.

[Matthew Remsky]

I just need to say, because we've done a lot of, like, aesthetic commentary, or I have, anyway, a lot of aesthetic commentary. The basso profundo of his voice, I think, has got to be about 80% of his longevity in this space, like his rhythm and his ability to sound like he is a sage, no matter what he's saying. And I think that Heather, his partner, is always sort of, like, affirming and letting him take those long beats. I think that's a huge part of the story. Like, I don't think he would get anywhere if he didn't, you know, just sort of rumble through our bodies like that.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, I agree. Because how else can someone frame Bobby's brain as uniquely encyclopedic and otherwise?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, yeah.

[Julian Walker]

I think it means uniquely able to do free, associative Gish gallops.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, right.

[Julian Walker]

Uniquely verbose while scientifically uninformed. But, I mean, this is all about a tweet, right? This is the amazing thing, is that these people can spin so much content out of something, like something as sort of trivial as a tweet or as. As small as a tweet. Notice here how Brett's selective repurposing of the meme is to just leave out the philandering angle and focus instead Only on Israel.

[Derek Barris]

Well, the philander. The philandering angle was brought in by Ian, right? It was. I mean, Cohen's mentioned it as part of what happened, but he didn't make that the focus. Like Ian and Alex then make it the focus.

[Julian Walker]

Okay.

[Derek Barris]

And Brett goes back to more being more honest or true about what Owens was doing.

[Julian Walker]

I don't know what's going on. Right. I don't know what it is, but there's something happening here.

[Matthew Remsky]

Okay, I'm just going to spitball this, but I think I have a psychological theory for what's happening with the various influencers. Is that however the Owens or Carol or Weinstein are actually identified with Bobby, however they feel themselves being attacked through his kind of like, like, you know, discrediting, that's what they're going to focus on. Right. So with Owens, it's going to be about the. The, you know, the vaccine issue. With Carol, I mean, it's going to be about, you know, whether he's accused of, you know, of sexual immorality. And then with Weinstein, it's going to. Yeah. And then Jones and then. Yeah. So everybody's. It's got to be. There's got to be something about what impacts them most, particularly with regard to their parasocial relationship to. Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

And to your point, Brett loves to be the galaxy brain former professor who was censored. And so that's what he's gonna focus on. Bobby is uniquely qualified to.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right, exactly. Just like I'm uniquely qualified.

[Julian Walker]

I've been cheated out of a Nobel Prize. And I can see that Bobby is a genius.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. And I can see that Bobby's about to be cheated out of his rightful place in the firmament of healthcare reformers. Okay, so what are the possible implications, though, beyond the fact that, like, Bobby has always been a Zionist. Like, are they saying that Mossad has something on him that, like, the ADL or AIPAC are threatening him? Like, it doesn't make any sense because he's already the secretary, if, you know, if the brain worm and admitting to assault and lying about vaccines hasn't done him by now, like, what would he be afraid of? Like, who could be blackmailing him? Why would he care about any pressure?

[Julian Walker]

We probably need another tweet for us to understand how Brett's friend. Friend. Brett's friend Bobby, you know, has always supported Israel very sincerely, but somehow this bizarre turn has now happened because the tweet shows that he's turned away from the things he really should be focusing on.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right. Okay.

[Derek Barris]

It makes me Wonder your question, Matthew. You know, now that, you know, the dog has caught the car, these people are now in power.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So they, they continually need to still be the aggrieved. I mean, that's Trump 1.0. And now it's even more now that his rogues gallery is all with him in charge. They still need to be perceived people who are, you know, the victims of the deep state, not the deep state itself. Look, guys, here ends our story, right?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Until April 2nd, when Brett invites Charles Eisenstein on the podcast, which he titled Staring down blackmail, talking RFK Jr. With Charles Eisenstein. Now, Eisenstein, of course, appeared for two episodes on our podcast in the very early days to discuss his Covid mythologizing essay, the coronation. You did those episodes with him, Matthew, and tis credit. He's one of the few people we've criticized who's engaged with us, though I don't think he would come on any longer. Eisenhein Eisenstein scored a position in the Kennedy campaign as the director of communications, and he was always troubled by Bobby's position on Israel, something he ended up writing numerous long and winding essays about. But he does personally know the man, at least a bit, and he reached out to Brett after the episode we just clipped from to express his concerns. Now, Brett leads with the idea that Bobby's being blackmailed, and that's stopping him from doing the amazing work that Maha is set to do. Now, Charles believes that he is Maha ing, and then the conversation goes in many directions. Both agree that Bobby doesn't. Didn't go to Epstein Island. So we do get a little bit of crossover there. There's some level of compromise behind the scenes. Brett believes whoever it is has substantial influence on our politics. And then Charles says that he. He's certain that Bobby isn't a pedophile, but he knows what party. Oh, sorry. But he. But who knows. But who knows what party has what information on who?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So even just quoting Charles gets me tongue tied sometimes. So here's one of the more concise clips about the supposed blackmail, and I apologize for the length, but Charles isn't exactly known for getting to a point quickly or coherent.

[Charles Eisenstein]

Well, you know, I think that he is addressing issues of health. And partly, you know, on one level, this is all a huge distraction and just another way for people to trip him up, you know, and divert his attention onto other matters. But there's something deeper here as well that's always bothered me. You know, it's no secret that I was vehemently opposed to his, what I would consider very extreme Zionist views during the campaign. And for me, the whole. The polarization around the Palestine issue and in many quarters, the collapse of something really complex into a good versus evil narrative that is at the root of the same problem that we're looking at in terms of public health and the political transformation that we are all excited by in, in the Maha movement, for example, isn't about merely shifting the identity of the bad guy, but it's a fundamental paradigm shift. It's a different way of looking at the world. And that is why, I mean, aside from the fact that, you know, innocent men, women and children are dying, I mean, that's why. Why it's so disturbing and so seemingly incongruous with. With everything else that he stands for. And so that's why, I think, why there is speculation. Okay. You know, we're not the only ones who have noticed this incongruity. So I think that's why there's speculation of, like, okay, what's going on here?

[Matthew Remsky]

I feel like Charles has to do this kind of like judo on his own argument where, like, he quit Bobby's campaign over Bobby's Zionism, but then he has to sort of impugn the assumed polarization that something like that or a move like that or a stance like that would have would exemplify. Yeah, it's like he had to take a stand and now he has to walk it back because now he's playing into the story of separation himself. But he hates Bobby's Zionist hawkishness. And so why would Bobby's focus in a tweet on Israel be surprising? So it's just like he's such a storyteller that he begins with this obvious explanation for why Bobby is Zionism posting, and then he has to make up a story about why it's somehow more complicated.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, and they hate postmodernism. Notice too how then he collapses the good versus bad supposed dualism and geopolitics that we have to transcend through the new paradigm. He makes that into being the same as science versus pseudoscience in medicine. It's just classic Charles Eisenstein, just like you said, Matthew. Like, each of them is going to see it through their prism. Each of them is going to write themselves into the story. The more beautiful world we know is possible can only happen when we get to the point where we transcend these dualisms. And for the love of God, Charles or Brett or Heather or whoever's in charge, please edit out the phlegm or pay someone else to do it. No one.

[Matthew Remsky]

There's, there's a, there's an AI for flem.

[Derek Barris]

I could have edited it out, but I just wanted to give listeners the full experience.

[Julian Walker]

Yes, absolutely.

[Derek Barris]

So they had to know what I had to endure for two hours. So you can listen all two hours of this conversation. Go for it. It's one of those rare instances where two bloated, verbose speakers are doing the weave between each other's conspiracy theories. They spend a lot of time discussing Israel, Gaza and anti Semitism. I just want to play one more clip that highlights, highlights just how highly Charles thinks of himself as a so called public philosopher.

[Charles Eisenstein]

At some point I kind of cracked the code for how compromise actually works. It's not like, it's not so, so explicit as, you know, you're, you're, you know, a public official and someone comes to you in a trench coat and says, hey, look at these videos. You wouldn't want these to get out there, so you better do as we say. No one wants to feel that they're being blackmailed. So what happens is there's this kind of, this, this latent knowledge among a large swath of the power elite that these kind of things are out there and that certain parties have that information. And the best way to make sure that that isn't a problem for you is to adopt the beliefs that make it unnecessary for you to be blackmailed in the first place. And so it's a little bit of, of the Stockholm syndrome, you know, where, where you start to sympathize with your captors.

[Julian Walker]

It's scintillating. Charlie has cracked the code. It's much more subtle and nuanced than everyone thinks. Guys, it's actually not that they've got dirt on you at all. It's that you're conforming intuitively to the beliefs and public statements that, that don't require any defense against blackmail. Right, yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

Everything's just floating in the miasma. And so people sort of, they don't have to respond to direct threats or to blackmailing statements. They'll just sort of like, they'll move, you know, as the winds blow them. It's pretty tragic because I think, you know, the essay that Charles could honestly write now is one sentence long, something like, you know, in a fit of personal grandiosity, I took the flattering bait on a presidential candidate who trained, turned out to be an insane grifter, and he paid me tens of thousands per month. You know, we live and learn. Thanks, bye.

[Derek Barris]

Well, Remember off the top I mentioned that everyone just brings their own ego into it. And I'm always stunned by how often people present very simple ideas as if they're revelations. I mean, this is actually what Maha is all about. Saying things like sunshine and exercise and good food will make you healthy. And then they present it as if no one's ever thought of that before.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, right.

[Derek Barris]

And that's in. In their own ecosystems, they get to do that sort of thing. I want to play one more clip from Candace Owens. Listeners, if you're still with us, congratulations. I promise it's the last one, and say what you will about her, and I've said a lot, but she never lets a viral moment go to waste. Her interview with her friend Ian Carol dropped on April 3rd, and it's gotten a million 1:1 view so far. 1.1 million. The first 10 minutes are the same. I know this person, but can't talk about it. And then she said that you're likely already numb to. Carol launches early into how many Maha and Maga and Children's Health defense workers he's in touch with. Doesn't name any of them. And then he follows. This is followed by Candace who is peacocking her sleuth credentials. Then Ian references Brett's super lucid podcasts on the topic what we just clipped from now, not to be outdone by Eisenstein, Ian Carroll breaks down what the blackmail really is. A friend who's got your back when you do some stupid until you need. Until they need a favor and then you better comply. It's a low key realization that. Huh, they do have that Epstein tape. I guess I gotta listen to this person. Person. Then he states why this has to be the case because Bobby would never allow himself to just be straight up blackmailed.

[Quentin]

I think that Bobby does have a strong soul and he does have that Kennedy mindset of like, of his lineage and what he stands for. And so I doubt he would be able to be blackmailed in an overt like do this or else way. Or at least not at first, but at first. Maybe the blackmail is small. Maybe it's just simple things and you never know what kind of leverages people get over politicians. And eventually you wind up with Rabbi Shmuley hanging out with you and declaring anti Semitism the greatest health crisis in America today or whatever it is.

[Julian Walker]

Well, he has good breeding, clearly from his Kennedy stock. And he's spiritually sound. He has a good soul. But the corruption of peer pressure will. Will get you every time, right? I Mean, as, as we move towards our closing discussion here, I want to point out for any of the listeners who don't follow this stuff the way we do, that that Candace Owens was a prominent figure on Ben Shapiro's huge ultra conservative daily wire platform until March of last year, 2024, when she had a very public falling out with Ben Shapiro, notably over his blanket support of Israel. And she rightly criticizes some of Israel's actions in Gaza. And then true to form, she then ends up mixing in plenty of actual anti Semitism, flirting with Holocaust denial, revisionist history on Hitler, Hitler, defending Kanye west, etc.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, I'm glad we got here because I mean, forcing this conflation of anti Zionism and anti Semitism from the right is such a mind. It happens from the left as well. But you know, I think the premise might be that it's religious Zionists in particular who are running the Imperial Project. And so criticizing those Jews as Jews is fine, but colonial Zionism itself wasn't historically a religious project.

[Julian Walker]

There you go again with your facts, Matthew. I think it's way too sophisticated. I mean, as with the word feminism earlier in, in this conversation, your reference to Zionism is rooted in history and academic definitions, and these folks know very little about any of that. I think when you say Zionism, they just hear Israel has a right to exist, Jews have a right to have a home, and if you oppose that, obviously you're an anti Semite. Right, but with regard to that history as well, I mean, there is kind of a blurry line there between religious and cultural identity. Whatever the Zionist, socialist, atheist philosophical bent may have been, say in the like, late 19th century, establishing a Jewish ethnostate in the land of the Old Testament is almost impossible to disentangle from religion, don't you think? So back to Candace. Since leaving the Daily Wire, she's gone independent. She came out of the gate with a hard turn toward tabloid Alex Jones style conspiracies as we've been hearing. For example, she said she would stake her entire career on French president, President's wife Brigitte Macron secretly being a man.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, well, how would that change the world in any way? Like what? What is that even. Like, who even cares?

[Julian Walker]

It's so nuts, it would make no difference whatsoever. But for people like Candace, and as we know, like Alex Jones before her, whose footsteps she's kind of walking in, this kind of elaborate deception evokes ominous Illuminati, Reptilian, shapeshifter, satanic cabal vibes. It's the subversion of all that is trad holy. And so, of course, she's done an eight video investigative series of videos on this topic. Because of how this ecosystem works. This has ended up getting her onto Piers Morgan and Theo Vaughn and Tucker Carlson shows to discuss this particular thing. That Brigitte Macron must be a man.

[Matthew Remsky]

Wow.

[Julian Walker]

She's also spent six months making Kamala Har. Excuse me, making Kamala Harris the lead story of over 19 videos in a series called the Kamala Chronicles. And these alleged that the former VP's family was involved in freemasonry and that they lied about being black. And in between all of this, she's found time to interview moon landing denialist Bart Sibrel and then stoke all of this Bobby blackmail stuff. So it seems like going way over the top now with these sensationalist claims is her strategy for staying relevant and courting an even more conspiracist audience than she did with the Daily Wire. And the punchline is it's working. She has a bigger audience than she had when she was with that outfit.

[Matthew Remsky]

You know, Derek, you've always pointed out how superior right wing organizing has been in the US over the past 40 years. That, you know, these are folks who are willing to make coalitions across Christian denominations. They have competing visions of capitalism. They will compromise on social or fiscal principles when it's expedient. Like we see this with school vouchers, for example. They'll sacrifice their, you know, outlier or fringe values when it will help consolidate their electoral power. You know, and in contrast, the center on the left of the country has struggled to build any popular front against rising fascism because it has to debate difficult structural and identitarian issues. But I think this episode is interesting because with the Bobby wars, we can start to see cracks in the coalition in a pattern that's kind of reminiscent of what we see on the left side of the ledger, like a paranoia over there always being something hidden, always being something, you know, ready to betray the cause. I did a piece a while back on how the feminist philosopher Eve Sedgwick tagged this tendency towards distrust as the style of paranoid reading, which kind of sums up Candace owns his entire style from the top of the episode. If you can predict how Kennedy is being paid by Mossad to focus on Israel instead of MRNA vaccines or whatever, you can protect yourself against disappointment. So it's not only that conspiratorialism and contrarianism is competitive and that you always have to up the ante, it's that if you abandon that particular mindset, you lose a real psychological defense that you might have been relying on for a very long time. And I think that's even more disorienting if your guy is closer to power.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. And just as there's no honor among thieves, the same same post truth broken cognitive style of paranoid conspiracism and demonizing of enemies very easily leads to eventual suspicion of your own circle. So the, the purity tests and the infighting are inevitable. Right.

[Derek Barris]

I know this story. You know, I know the clips are a couple weeks old. It hasn't completely died down. House Inhabit just on the 18th, published an article called if for Nothing Else. It was written by someone named Aaron Everett, who I didn't look very deeply into. I guess he's a contributor there. It's a very, very verbose and long piece about the Roman Emperor and comparing it to the American empire and like whatever problems Maha and Bobby has, you know, at least Bobby's out there talking about things like I said, that medicine has known for generations. And then you get to Jillian Michaels, who is newer to the Maha contrarian space, but she was at the Maha congressional hearing with Ron Johnson a few months ago, and she started a podcast eight months ago and has platformed Bill O'Reilly and Heather Hang, Matt Walsh, Tony Robbins, Dave Rubin, and recently Candace Owens. So Owens came on to discuss the blackmail issue, but Candace immediately pivoted. She actually didn't even say Kennedy's name during the entire thing. She immediately wanted to talk about her personal grievances. So I didn't clip it. But I'm sure as Kennedy continues to not tow the purity lines that you just referenced, Julian, that his fan base expects Owens and others will reemerge with more license plates and old tweets to discuss the nevarious puppet masters pulling his strings. And meanwhile, the gutting of public health continues under Bobby's purview. His promises of stopping chronic disease has turned into this myopic focus on autism, as I, I know you're going to mention. We close, Matthew. And I want to point out one last example of the hypocrisy of Maha here, which deserves way more oxygen than the conspiratorial blackmailing that makes for great content in the right wing podcast space. Kevin hall, recently retired from the NIH. Now for 21 years, the Nutrition and metabolism scientist has studied how diet affects health. He was behind the 2019 study that linked ultra processed foods to chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity. This is the very study that MAHA activists have weaponized to sell supplements.

[Matthew Remsky]

Oh, so he's their guy.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, his study is laid the groundwork for a lot of what they rail against now. Why is he leaving? Because hall says that censorship is rampant under Kennedy's watch. So he. He's continued to do good work. And his recent findings about addictions and ultra processed foods didn't match Kennedy's predetermined stance on the topic. And so he was apparently going to squash the research. Rather than fighting an impossible battle, hall decided to retire. And this is a real loss for people who care about public health. And I'm not really sure who it's a win for.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's a win for Bobby's worldview, right? For his general sort of, I don't know, imaginarium of what the world is like, which is just sort of dangerous and dire and always threatening. He had this recent bile dump about ending the autism epidemic, and that's opened a new front in the Baja purity wars. I'm sure we're going to do a lot more on this in the weeks to come and months to come. It's been pretty interesting to watch him say exactly what he's been saying about autistic people for 15 years or more, basically, that all of them are dysfunctional people who don't pay taxes, that, you know, these are kids who don't play baseball or they don't kiss the girls, they're ruining their family's lives, and all kinds of incredibly fucking insulting and incorrect stuff. But now he's saying this stuff on a much less bubble filtered stage. So I watched my own autism socials blow up last week in disgust, and that's a really good thing. But it also kind of showed me that Bobby faces real liabilities when he gets to a truly international stage. And, you know, he's not really buffered by anybody. And I'm wondering whether there's a ton of maha mamas out there who have gushed over him for years because he seemed to care about their autistic children and whether they're going to stand for his hate speech forever because, you know, they didn't support his candidacy so that he could call their kids useless eaters, basically.

[Julian Walker]

Oh, I. I don't know, Matthew. One thing those maha mamas seem to stand for more often than not is hate speech.

[Unknown]

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